Levinas

CLAVIEZ, Thomas: Aesthetics & Ethics. Otherness and Moral Imagination from Aristotle to Levinas and from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to "House Made of Dawn". (American Studies 163). Heidelberg: Winter 2008.
In a first, theoretical part, this study analyzes what role "otherness" plays in the most influential moral-philosophical approaches to date - from Aristotle and the Neo-Aristotelians (Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum) via Kantianism and its deconstructors (Jean-Francois Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller) to the works of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas - and sheds light on its highly problematic status in Western notions of justice and aesthetics. Starting from a revised notion of the sublime, the second part uses the different theoretical approaches to interpret four American novels (Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor', Richard Wright's 'Native Son', and N. Scott Momaday's 'House Made of Dawn'), and examines how far the respective moral-philosophical systems carry in elucidating these texts, as well as what role literary-historical and generic strategies play in dramatizing the encounter with "otherness".

XXVIII, 466 S. Kart. *neuwertig*

[KW: Literaturwissenschaft]

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Rychter, Ewa: (Un)Saying the Other. Allegory and Irony in Emmanuel Levinas's Ethical Language. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien Peter Lang Vlg. 2004. ISBN: 978-3-631-52689-7
The problem of signifying the other within the logocentric language occupies an important place in Emmanuel Levinas's ethics. (Un)Saying the Other examines the ways in which Levinasian discourse - the discourse always already partaking of ontological injustice - enables the ethical articulation of otherness. The author explores the unfolding of ethical expression both opened and troubled by the allegorical and ironic ruptures of the logocentric language. Reflecting on the philosophical complications incumbent in the potentially infinite process of interrupting the ontological language, the book argues for the responsible rethinking of the ethical call to unsay.

170 pp. Pb. *neuwertig*

[KW: Philosophie]

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Vries, Hent de: Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. By Hent de Vries. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1999. ISBN: 0801859956
Aus dem Klappentext: "If Religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In this engaging study, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, especially, Jacques Derrida. "Where-or where not?-does religion exist in contemporary culture, and in what forms or by what symptoms does its perennial encounter with philosophy now manifest itself? Following the leads of Derrida, Heidegger, and Levinas, and of those whose leads they follow, Hent de Vries proposes these new/old questions as tracing the most sensitive seismograph of the state of our worldwide culture. His extraordinary learning, his sophisticated sympathy with various disciplines and with competing modes of philosophizing, and his patient, engaged, courteous voice, make this book a place of profit not alone for those already convinced of the gravity of its topics, but for those who may well seek a way into matters that they sense they have been keeping at bay." Stanley Cavell, Harvard University." - Schnitte und Titelblatt gestempelt. Sonst sehr guter Zustand. ISBN: 0801859956 - , ISBN-13: 9780801859953

XVIII, 475 Seiten, Gr. 8° (23 x 15 cm), Orig.-Pappeinband.

[KW: Vries, Hent de: Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. By Hent de Vries, Philosophie philosophy]

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Welz, Claudia: Love's Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy. (Religion in Philosophy and Theology 30). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008.
Claudia Welz explores responses to the problem of evil that do not end up in a rational defense of God. How can we deal with 'the wound of negativity?' Kierkegaard's and Rosenzweig's reasons for having no reason to defend God and their ethics of love are discussed in the double context of German idealism and French phenomenology. They follow Kant's practical turn of the problem of theodicy, oppose Hegel's theodicy through history and can contribute to the current debates on 'metaphysics of presence' and 'onto-theology' - debates dealing with the limits of Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenology. In dialogue with Levinas, the (non)phenomenal presence of God's love is in question, in dialogue with Derrida God's presence as a gift, and in dialogue with Marion the gift of God's presence as a self-giving phenomenon. In conclusion to these discussions, theology is developed as semiotic phenomenology of the Invisible.

XX, 437 S. Br. *neuwertig*

[KW: Philosophie, Religionen; Theodizee]

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